Verizon Completes Yahoo Purchase

Yahoo has now officially closed the book on being an independent company as Verizon has completed its acquisition of the Internet portal for $4.5 billion. Once seen as perhaps the most important company on the internet, Yahoo was never able to fully understand search and once it lost its lead to Google, never was able to make a serious effort to reclaim it. Instead, Yahoo attempted to transition to a successful content company but had difficulty monetizing that as well.

Google and Yahoo revenues since their founding through 2015.

Verizon has made a push into Internet content as more and more customers access web portals like Yahoo from their smartphones. They will merge the Yahoo business into its existing AOL business. AOL was another once-darling of internet investors for which the times passed it by. It was purchased in 2015 by Verizon for $4.4 billion.

The centerpiece of AOL is The Huffington Post, one of the most popular news websites in the world. AOL purchased the company for $315 million in 2011. AOL also owns Moviefone, Techcrunch, and MapQuest. In addition to the core Yahoo property, the Yahoo acquisition will bring sites like Tumblr and Flickr.

Merging the platforms will allow Verizon to cut about 2,000 jobs. Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is also leaving the company with a $23 million severance package.

The new entity will be called “Oath” and led by former AOL CEO Tim Armstrong.